Bible Review, February 1998
Features
Cain and Abel: The first two brothers of the first family in history. The only brothers in the world. The saddest, the most tragic. Why do they hold such an important place in our collective memory, which the Bible represents for so many of us? Mean, ugly, immoral, oppressive—their story disturbs and frightens. It […]
Shivering, an aged King David lay on his deathbed, suffering from cold. But “although they covered him with clothes, he could not get warm” (1 Kings 1:1). One telling detail in the biblical account of David’s death accentuates the irreversible decline of the king, whose empire has dissolved around him, whose family has betrayed […]
Films recreate the past and make it come alive. For many people movies are their first and most memorable encounter with history. Movies can also reflect a society’s changing values, as well as its attempts to come to terms with its past and draw lessons for its future. This is especially true of movies […]
Paul: A Critical Life Jerome Murphy-O’Connor (New York and Oxford: Clarendon, 1996) xv1 + 416 pp., $35 Paul: The Mind of the Apostle A.N. Wilson (New York and London: Norton, 1977) xiii + 274 pp., $25 What Saint Paul Really SaidWas Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? Tom Wright (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, […]
The impulse to engage with the Bible is, at its roots, a religious—that is to say, a theological—one. So it has been for thousands of years, for both Jews and Christians. This changed, in the 18th century, with what we call the Enlightenment. I do not mean to discredit the Enlightenment. It shaped the […]